Welcome
to the wild, whirling, weird world of Uzumaki, the most psychedelic,
berserk, acid-addled, alarming, astounding, hilarious horror film
ever. Go buy the DVD, and strap yourselves into your sofas, 'cos
it's gonna be a helluva trip

when
you were little, did you ever spend hours and hours running around
in circles trying to make yourself dizzy, and then fall over laughing
while the room span around you? Well, Uzumaki makes you feel
like that all over again...

Those of you who are already au fait with the brilliant manga of
Uzumaki (subtitled Spiral Into Horror and released
in Europe by Viz Comics) written and drawn by Junji Ito will kind
of know what kind of thing to expect - creepy, crazy, innovative,
dark and twisted stuff. However, taking on the appallingly difficult
task of translating it to the big screen is the first-time director
Higuchinsky (no, he's not actually Eastern European, but Japanese
pretending to be Polish, if you can get your head around such
a thing).

And does he make a horrible botch-job of it as with the vile crime
perpetrated by Ataru Oikawa on Ito's genius that is Tomie?
The answer is a resounding HELL NO! Somehow Higuchinsky manages
to achieve the utterly impossible: staying absolutely faithful to
Ito's manga (almost frame by frame on occasions) and yet making
the impossible not merely possible but actually plausible. Heck,
if you thought the manga was crackers, you wait until you see the
film! Frankly, you need to see this film. If you were disappointed
with Tomie (and honestly, who wouldn't be?) and can't get
enough of Ito's madness, this is the film you've been waiting for
- something which does the manga real justice.

Synopsis

The
film opens in the small town of Kuruzou-cho, a fairly isolated and
insular harbour town dominated by wailing sirens and a mysterious
lighthouse. The heroine of the story, Gosima Kirie (played very
appealingly by Eriko Hatsune) is running to meet up with her boyfriend
Saito Shuichi (played by an ex-male-model, Fhi Fan) when several
strange things happen to her. Firstly, she is hit by a kind of tiny
whirlwind, startling her.

When
she resumes her journey, she spots another strange thing going on
up one of the town's little alleys: Shuichi's father, Saito Toshio
(the great Ren Osugi in brilliant form), is kneeling down by a fence.
On closer investigation, Kirie sees that he is silently videotaping
a snail. She calls out politely to him, but he completely ignores
her, as though he can't hear her although she is standing behind
him.

A
little bewildered, she continues running through the streets, now
late for meeting Shuichi, when all of a sudden, Yamaguchi (the charming
and sinister Sadao Abe, who has the smile of the Devil! - move over,
Jack Nicholson!), a young lad who gets a kick out of frightening
people, but who has a giant crush on her, leaps out from behind
a fence and scares the life out of her. He wants to get her attention
all the time and begins stalking her but his behaviour is
deeply weird, even more unhinged than normal.

When
Kirie finally meets up with Shuichi, she tells him about his father's
odd behaviour, and he tells her that his father has been acting
very strangely for quite a while; he refuses to go to work, and
just spends all day long collecting and staring at spiral-patterned
objects. In fact, later that evening, Saito-san visits Kirie's father
Gosima-san (Taro Suwa) at their house. Gosima-san is a master potter,
and Shuichi's father seems oddly obsessive about the way the plates
are spinning on the wheel, videotaping them making spirals on the
lens

however, it's not only Saito-san and Yamaguchi that are acting oddly:
everyone in the town seems to be out of their normal patterns of
behaviour: another student at Kirie's school is getting slower and
slower and slimier and slimier, stops coming to lessons unless it
rains, and there's a weird spiral pattern forming on his back
somebody steals the spiral-shaped sign from outside the hair salon
a very strange girl at Kirie's school named Sekino (Hinako Saeki)
tells Kirie and her friend Ishikawa (Asumi Miwa) that her only interest
in life is attracting other people to her, and odd things start
happening to her hair .

As
his father's sanity fails, and his mother Yukie (Keiko Takashi)
develops a phobia of spirals, Shuichi comes to an outlandish conclusion:
that the whole town is cursed! But how can they escape from their
doom? Where's it all going to end? And what on earth could be causing
this bizarre collective madness?!

From
start to finish, Uzumaki is a rollercoaster ride of non-stop
schlock-shocks, one of the oddest films I've ever seen, and a complete
hoot. Tinted throughout in a bizarre green colour, and featuring
little tricksy gimmicks like camera-wipes and tiny digitized spiral
shapes that form and deform in strange places throughout (you'll
find yourself playing Spot-The-Spiral after a while), it's a joy
for the eyes as well as the brain.

However,
one small - nay, tiny - criticism of the film is that you genuinely
don't know if Higuchinsky is playing his film for laughs or for
chills. The Ito manga is quite certain of its intention to scare
and disorientate; however, the film really isn't at all frightening.
Insane, yes; silly at times, yes; dispensing eye-bulging shocks
every few minutes, yep, that too. But no atmosphere of tension or
dread as in the original manga. That said, Uzumaki is a total
triumph: a hugely enjoyable pop-cult scream, and worth buying to
watch again and again.

text,
webdesign (c) 2002 M. Apple. All characters, situations and images
remain the property of their respective owners. The
text and webdesign of this site may not be copied, reproduced, mirrored,
printed commercially or ripped off in any other way. Do not hotlink
directly to images hosted on this site.